After millions of years of evolutionary trial and error, or natural selection as Charles Darwin put it, the homo sapiens proved to be the dominant species. Was this the case because humans were expert risk takers or fear conquerors? Quite the opposite actually.

My least favorite moment in all of cinema is a relatively common one. You will recognize it, I’m sure, from dozens of movies and TV shows that prominently feature scientists. You may even have laughed at it once or twice. It usually gets a quick chortle. The moment goes something like this:

For a while I had this security guide written for myself and finally decided to share it with everyone. This post will be a semi-detailed guide on what, why and how to secure your machine. Hope you enjoy it :)

I’ve worked with deploy systems in the past that have a prominent “rollback” button, or a console incantation with the same effect. The presence of one of these is reassuring, in that you can imagine that if something goes wrong you can quickly get back to safety by undoing your last change.

Google’s rollout of artificial intelligence has many in the search engine optimization (SEO) industry dumbfounded. Optimization tactics that have worked for years are quickly becoming obsolete or changing.

In a footnote in that post, I mentioned that Alexa also incorporates variable rewards as a way to engage users. For today’s post, I thought I’d explore how Alexa incorporates variable rewards and why they are effective.

A year and a half ago, I dropped out of one of the best computer science programs in Canada. I started creating my own data science master’s program using online resources. I realized that I could learn everything I needed through edX, Coursera, and Udacity instead.

Andy Grove was a Hungarian refugee who escaped communism, studied engineering, and ultimately led the personal computer revolution as the CEO of Intel. He died earlier this year in Silicon Valley after a long fight with Parkinson’s disease.

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes. I’m an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. That’s why I spent the last three years as a Design Ethicist at Google caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people’s minds from getting hijacked.

Seven months ago, I sat down at the small table in the kitchen of my 1960s apartment, nestled on the top floor of a building in a vibrant central neighbourhood of Tehran, and I did something I had done thousands of times previously. I opened my laptop and posted to my new blog.

TL;DR: Better Gaming is an online casino games technology and development company building both a platform and a suite of high quality leading casino games. Funded by angel tech investors — and now ready to ‘show n tell’.

Disclaimer: I’m not an expert in neural networks or machine learning. Since originally writing this article, many people with far more expertise in these fields than myself have indicated that, while impressive, what Google have achieved is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

It’s early and dark. The alarm sounds, and you reach over to switch it off. After a short pause, you sit up. You swing your legs off the bed, touch the floor with your feet, and reach for your phone. You sit quietly while your phone’s screen illuminates the dark bedroom.

Many consider Peter Drucker the most influential thinker in the history of management. His prolific writings — over 30 books — have gone on to sell millions of copies and inspire young managers all over the world.

The last couple of years I’ve spent a lot of time teaching myself web development and machine learning. While the subjects have differed a lot — from Javascript, Node and React to Python, Scikit Learn and neural networks — my approach to learning has stayed the same.

My framework for getting places, accomplishing things and living in a way that makes me happy. This isn’t a bullshit, head in the clouds, you can do it if you just *believe*post. There’s plenty of those out there. I’m not going to write another one.

I’ve been working in software development for twenty-eight years. My current position is Senior Development Director at a software consulting company in Austin, Texas, a position I’ve held for just over six years.

The thing that has become the most clear to us this election year is that we don’t agree on the fundamental truths we thought we did. Over the last several weeks I have watched dozens of my friends on Facebook de-friend one another.

I love to write about face recognition, image recognition and all the other cool things you can build with machine learning. Whenever possible, I try to include code examples or even write libraries/APIs to make it as easy as possible for a developer to play around with these fun technologies.

At Airbnb, we are always searching for ways to improve our data science workflow. A fair amount of our data science projects involve machine learning, and many parts of this workflow are repetitive. These repetitive tasks include, but are not limited to:

The computing industry progresses in two mostly independent cycles: financial and product cycles. There has been a lot of handwringing lately about where we are in the financial cycle. Financial markets get a lot of attention. They tend to fluctuate unpredictably and sometimes wildly.

Getting into machine learning (ml) can seem like an unachievable task from the outside. However, after dedicating one week to learning the basics of the subject, I found it to be much more accessible than I anticipated.

You know, thinking, worrying, stressing, freaking out — call it whatever you want. I call it a preoccupied mind. And with what? All my life I’ve been obsessed with practical things. Practical philosophy, practical knowledge, practical books, practical work, and practical advice.

For the next minute or so, I want you to forget about CSS. Forget about web development. Forget about digital user interfaces. And as you forget these things, I want you to allow your mind to wander. To wander back in time. Back to your youth. Back to your first day of school.

Containers are already adding value to our proven globally available cloud platform based on Amazon EC2 virtual machines. We’ve shared pieces of Netflix’s container story in the past (video, slides), but this blog post will discuss containers at Netflix in depth.

In his backpack, Wouter Slotboom, 34, carries around a small black device, slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes, with an antenna on it. I meet Wouter by chance at a random cafe in the center of Amsterdam. It is a sunny day and almost all the tables are occupied.

Kindness: If you are giving back you’ve already taken too much. Evolve and grow: Life’s about progress, we can either move forward and relentlessly improve or be consumed and surpassed by the horde which stands in wait behind us. Standing still is proportionate to regression.

That quote kickstarted my own reading habits and helps me regularly read over 100 books a year. Charlie Munger is the billionaire business partner of Warren Buffett and the Vice Chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, one of the largest companies in the world.

By François Petitjean, @LeDataMiner. Forget about the meaning of words, forget about grammar, forget about syntax, forget even the very concept of a word. Now let the machine learn everything by itself.

Secretary to composer György Ligeti: “He is creative and, because of this, totally overworked. Therefore, the very reason you wish to study his creative process is also the reason why he (unfortunately) does not have time to help you in this study.

Three weeks ago, the CMO of a San Francisco startup backed by A-list investors emailed me about her new sales deck. “It lacks oomph,” she said. “The information is there. The slides look great. But we’re not telling a compelling story. Can you help?”

We all care about what others think of us and want to be liked (despite what rebellious 15-year-old you might have said). The basics of getting people to like you are obvious — be nice, be considerate, be a decent human being. Those things are all true.

Out all the different ways to learn, books remain my favorite way to absorb knowledge. What I like about books is that I can read them by myself, in silence. It’s me and the author, one on one, having a conversation in my mind.

The results of a year-long experiment in 2016 where I’ve recorded all of my learnings (456 in total). One of the reasons why I love year-ends is because the “end” of anything always gives rise to opportunities for reflection.

Want to find out all the things Google knows about you? Here are 6 links that will show you some of the data Google has about you. In order to serve relevant ads, Google collects data about you and creates a profile. You can control and review the information Google has on you here:

What can neuroscience teach us about the brains of software developers? A lot. Software development is among the fastest growing jobs in America — projected to grow 17% from 2014–2024 (much faster than the average job growth rate, a projected 7% change from 2014–2024).

Reading is a huge key to success and wealth, but how can you actually benefit from this habit as a busy adult? I’ve said it many times: reading books is a major key to success. The mega-rich and successful like Bill Gates and Elon Musk devote extraordinary amounts of their time to reading.

Distilling a generally-accepted definition of what qualifies as artificial intelligence (AI) has become a revived topic of debate in recent times. Some have rebranded AI as “cognitive computing” or “machine intelligence”, while others incorrectly interchange AI with “machine learning”.

Take a look at the image below. It’s a collection of bugs and creepy-crawlies of different shapes and sizes. Take a moment to categorize them by similarity into a number of groups. This isn’t a trick question. Start with grouping the spiders together.

To become more more successful at everything you do in life, you need to do three things: reduce the amount of time you waste, be more organized, and get rid of the “mental clutter” that distracts you, preoccupies you, and stresses you out.

Once upon a time, a friend of mine accidentally took over thousands of computers. He had found a vulnerability in a piece of software and started playing with it. In the process, he figured out how to get total administration access over a network.

Machine learning is on the edge of revolutionizing those 12 sectors. Most leaders in those industries look at Machine Learning and see a non-stable, none viable technology in the short term. They are wrong. This will allow technological Entrepreneurs to disrupt them.

A few months ago, my friend Tim took a new sales job at a Series C tech company that had raised over $60 million from A-list investors. He’s one of the best salespeople I know, but soon after starting, he emailed me to say he was struggling.

On December 2nd, 1942, a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi came back from lunch and watched as humanity created the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction inside a pile of bricks and wood underneath a football field at the University of Chicago.

Lately, I needed to come up with some top level principles for the product I’m currently working on. I seek for some simple yet powerful concepts that will guide our team design decisions and break stalemates in discussions.

According to new research, practice doesn’t make actually make perfect. Whether you’re trying to be pro at Photoshop, or step up your tennis game, or master a dueling banjo song, you’re probably dutifully following the age-old advice that practice makes perfect.

This past week, I was in a Lyft. My driver was telling me about all of her ideas for side projects. She had ideas for a children’s book, an app that helps people find parking, and a more efficient way to package gifts. The problem was she was frozen by indecision.

1. Have a firm handshake.2. Look people in the eye.3. Sing in the shower.4. Own a great stereo system.5. If in a fight, hit first and hit hard.6. Keep secrets.7. Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen everyday.8. Always accept an outstretched hand.9. Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be.

I’d spent six years between 2004–2010 on getting two degrees. And after that, I immediately started a business. And during my first two years as an entrepreneur, I also learned a lot. But after a while, I thought: Who needs education? Just start a business or get a job and earn some money.

Cracking Wi-Fi passwords isn't a trivial process, but it doesn't take too long to learn—whether you're talking simple WEP passwords or the more complex WPA. Learn how it works so you can learn how to protect yourself.

For the last four years I have continued to design dashboards and applications and I have learnt how to deal with different departments, and utilise their knowledge in order to make product designs both better and more efficient.

I’ve seen a few CS students fearful about the industry they’ll enter into when they graduate. And with all the recent tech news, who can blame them? Why am I even still here? This is my career retrospective — what has been great, what has been horrible, why I’m still here & fighting.

The 8 Ivy League schools are among the most prestigious colleges in the world. They include Brown, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale, and Columbia universities, and the University of Pennsylvania. All eight schools place in the top fifteen of the U.S.

Most self-improvement “strategies” and even psychological interventions seek incremental progress. And although this approach, especially over a long period of time, will yield results, there are better approaches to change.

In this blog post I’ll explain how we’re making our sales process at Xeneta more effective by training a machine learning algorithm to predict the quality of our leads based upon their company descriptions.

What habits, tactics and routines do the most successful people use to achieve their earth-shaking accomplishments? One guy wanted to know. So he talked to over 200 world-class achievers to learn from them.

Keep your head down and your nose to the grindstone. That’s what a lot of us were taught to believe about work. But is it really the best strategy? I’ve gathered up my top 10 lessons you should take to heart now, before it’s too late!

Not long ago, a friend asked me to read his book. He’d written a rough draft and wasn’t sure what to do after that. After reading it, I explained how writing a book involves not one, but five, different drafts. He was surprised to hear that. Most people are.

Explained in 10 sketchesAssigning TasksDelivering NewsConducting 1:1sGiving FeedbackDealing with TurbulenceFor more detailed reads of the sketches above:Managing with Martians — or, why frameworks are better than answersSo, You Think You Want to Manage — what is management? and why woul

I’ve gotten countless variations of this question over the past year. I can’t tell you everything I’ve learned at HBS, and no book would have prepared me for the experience. Instead, I’m going to give you a taste. Some of these literally blew my mind.

I am by no means the unicorn prophet, but here’s how I think about which companies have earned their unicorn status vs. which ones are playing a dangerous game of massive capital needs, sky high valuations, impossible expectations, and deferred judgement days.

It’s 3 AM on a warm Thursday night in December, a usually quiet street in the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona is bustling with activity, as a cohort of 200 artificial intelligence researchers leave in single-file out of a sprawling yellow mansion.

30 day challenges are a great way to force yourself out of your comfort zone to take on new skills. You can learn new things, form lasting habits, and find out more about yourself in general. Plus, at just 30 days long, you don't have much to lose.

I had a friend who wanted to get better at painting. But she thought she had to be in Paris, with all the conditions right. She never made it to Paris. Now she sits in a cubicle under fluorescent lights, filling out paperwork all day. Someone stole $90 million from a company I was involved in.

History is full of evil dictators, and while the had their share of bad qualities, it’s undeniable they were efficient at getting things done. Here’s what we can learn from them, despite their evil nature.

There’s much new in the world of Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and you might be wondering how compatible they are with existing architectures using libraries like React and JS module bundlers like Webpack.

We want to be successful. We want to be happy. We want to be free of worry, free of fear of missing out. Not being jealous of someone achieving more than me. Not run after the next shiny thing. So, I have decided to read up on this topic. From ancient philosophy to modern day version of it.